Google Apps – What is it and why should I use it?
What is Google Apps?
Google Apps is the name for the suite of office type applications that Google have created. They are very similar to Microsoft Office in that you can create word documents, spreadsheets, presentations and so on. Some business’ are great at marketing, they control a market, just like Microsoft have for the last few year (they are so scared now!). Its also referred to as Google Apps for Business, Gmail for Business, Google Apps. There are also Non-profit and Education variants of the suite.
How many people think of all tablet computers as “the iPad”? “Is that an iPad” I hear them say, “No, its a tablet computer, Samsung make this one, and it runs Android”. in this same way Microsoft have a strong hold on the Office software market. Just like the iPad, office is expensive, bloated and very restrictive on how you actually use it. Google Apps is a much more affordable solution for business and personal use.
A single Google Apps licence ($50) gives you access to the entire quite off applications, from anywhere, from many different devices. You only need access to a web browser, like Internet Explorer or Google Chrome (or any of the others) and you will have access to your documents, emails, calendar for organising yourself and much more.
If you have used a personal GMail account for a while, then its pretty much the same thing, but its more secure, and more reliable in terms of availability and up-time. For those of you who work in offices, just think back to how many times you have had issues getting outlook to, firstly behave itself (not crash / freeze), and retrieve your emails. You often have you had to setup complicated VPN settings on your home computer in order to access you work emails. Or you struggled with maintaining the status and responses to emails on your laptop and work machine, which can sometimes duplicate and get out of sync?
Google Mail provides a central point where all your emails reside, and you can access them on your iPhone, ipad, tablet device, home computer, personal phone, web browser while overseas and anywhere else you can think of. Any time you make a change on one of those devices, all of the other systems will mirror each other, you read an email or reply to one, when you get home and quickly have to check something you forgot, your email view will be exactly the same.
You can use Outlook from many machines, and even use Word, Excel or PowerPoint and centralise where your files are stored. One of the best features of Google Docs, is you do not need to worry about that extremely time consuming version control problem that you always used to encounter. Google Docs is the way of the future, many people can work on one document at the exact same time in real time, test it out here: https://docs.google.com/demo . In Google Docs, you can import your old documents that you had before, you can even save a Google Doc straight to a PDF or a word file format. It even has the ability for you to just email the file you have been working on as an attachment, in a particular file format (pdf, word etc), with a few clicks.
Why would i want to put my business on Google Apps?
Google Apps is far cheaper that an office license, and that’s the bottom line. It will save you a bundle, ask us and we can help you work out how much you will save. If you are running an internal email server like MS Exchange, you won’t need that anymore, so you won’t have to pay to keep that running, keep patching or fixing mail delivery issues, so you can really focus your IT resource’ attention on something that can return value to your business. There are many more reasons, and we would be more than happy to talk them through with you.
Is Google Apps secure enough?
Yes, it is very secure. We would even go as far as to say that it is more secure than your existing email server. Encryption is enforced, mail servers are fully redundant and maintained by the worlds best technicians, Google are security audited more than your organisation is likely to have ever been. We can provide security white papers and further details if you like.
Why are people moving onto Google Apps?
The biggest draw card are the financial savings. Secondly, in our experience, it has been the choice and flexibility the system provides. Your business and work behaviour feels more open and far more efficient once you start using it. Organising emails, searching for emails is far more logical and quicker than outlook will ever be.
Not being limited by where and when users access their information, securely is another draw card. We are digital consumers these days, we don’t like to be restricted, we love the choice that the digital age has provided. Old style office based business is changing to a more flexible working arrangement, people work from home, on the train, on planes and while on holidays! We need access, we need it to be reliable, and we need it to be fast. Google Apps provides this.
How would I use it?
If you still have an older version of Office, say 2007, and don’t really want to upgrade or change away from Outlook, then you can remain on there. Half your company could use the web interface, which is super quick, and the rest could stay on Outlook. There is nothing stopping you from configuring your setup how you desire. Choice, that’s the key ingredient, and with Google Apps the choice is all yours.
Why would I use it?
Save time, money and so much more. Its quite simply, in our opinion, a far better way to work. We never have issues with tracking down files, or emails. Our mailboxes are 25gb (so no Outlook pst backups at 2gb), we can share documents with certain people, we can create little websites (with Google Sites) for internal or external projects. We can do so much more than we ever could when we, as a team, tried working together in Office.
Version control is a thing of the past. Worrying about backing up documents or the email server is out the window. All of those old approaches to using the technology of yesteryear are no longer worries. We focus on the things we need to focus on, and the system never lets us down. In 5 years of using Google Apps, our staff have never encountered an outage ever. That’s the way the system is designed, it cloud computing at its best.
How do I access it?
As I mentioned, you can use a web browser, or any email client. You can be on a mac, an iPhone, an ubuntu machine, or on windows, the choice is yours. You could even take it one step further and get yourself a chromebook
Will i have issues in using it?
There are change management issues which crop up during a change over, but that is the same as any issues you may encounter when learning something new. Microsoft have been so dominant in the office business software space, that we don’t know how to use anything else. There is a better way, and Google Apps is it. You should really give it a try. We can help with all the issues, and discuss with you your concerns. We can arrange a demo, or a meeting with our technical teams. We believe wholeheartedly in the Google Apps platform.
Cloud Assist is a Google Partner, we specialise in moving people off Lotus Notes, Group Wise, MS Exchange and anything else that receives email, onto Google Apps. We have helped countless organisations with the process, from change management to the technical delivery.
